Booher: Easy to ask what could have been with Bridges

Carthage High School junior Drew Bridges for All-Ozarks Baseball team

Remember as a kid when you'd ride your bike to the convenience store, splurge on candy because it sounded so good and then kinda wish you hadn't?

That came to mind after Carthage slugger Drew Bridges recently chucked his commitment to Missouri State baseball and signed a minor league contract with the New York Yankees.

Honestly, it was hard not to cringe.

Yes, the allure of eventually wearing the pinstripes in Yankee Stadium is great.

And, yes, Bridges - a recent 20th-round draft pick - apparently received a healthy signing bonus. According to industry expert Jim Callis of Baseball America, it was sixth-round money. That'd be anywhere between $175,000 to $300,000.

All of which sounds great. And hopefully Bridges goes on to enjoy a fabulous career.

But again, it's hard not to cringe.

I say that for so many reasons, partially because of what I've seen in covering minor league baseball going back to 2001.

For full disclosure, I'm a college-first guy.

Going to college right after high school is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Plus, college allows time for more maturity, you're close to home if you get homesick and so forth. You can't put a price tag on that.

Even better, for players on scholarship who likely will be drafted anyway after their junior seasons, they'll be all the closer to a degree, having done so on someone else's dime.

Had Bridges joined the Bears, he could have been part of something special.

Center fielder Tate Matheny, the Missouri Valley Conference Freshman of the Year, along with first baseman Spencer Johnson and an intriguing young pitching staff, could lead the Bears' next wave of NCAA Tournament teams.

Bridges, known for his bat and his pitching, could have factored in right away. In fact, perhaps he could have been the Bears' latest version of Darren Dreifort, the Wichita State two-way star in the early 1990s.

Dreifort's also a good example of my case here.

He won the Golden Spikes award as the national player of the year as college junior in 1993, the same season he was the No. 2 overall choice in the amateur draft. Three years earlier, he was an 11th-round selection of the Twins.

By going to college, Dreifort went on to play on three College World Series teams, and got even more money at the end.

Now Bridges is heading off to the Yankees' spring training campus in Tampa, Fla.

This isn't to begrudge him or any other high school senior for taking six-figure money and going pro right away, since each family's financial situation is different and none of our business.

But, understand, signing bonuses are taxed, so players aren't really receiving the full amount. If their bonus is $1 million, it's not an issue. But, say, it's roughly $100,000. That can go fast, I'd imagine, for a teen.

Fortunately, some organizations do reserve part of signing bonuses for college-use only, and hopefully the Yankees included it in Bridges' contract.

However, it's easy to question what any low-round pick out of high school is getting into this year.

Callis told me a few weeks ago that this year was "a below-average draft." Bridges was rated No. 449 among Baseball America's Top 500. But that's different if we're talking last year's draft or two years earlier.

And now Bridges is in the minor leagues against players from those drafts, plus talents up from Latin America. That's far different from the Central Ozark Conference.

But, as I said, hopefully Bridges has a fabulous career. I just wish he would have experienced college first.

Boggs trade

Gotta love the maturity Tuesday night of "the best fans in baseball" after they took to Twitter to rip Mitchell Boggs or cheer for his trade to the Colorado Rockies. Some St. Louis Cardinals fans, not all, clearly are downright spoiled.

They do know Boggs, as a lockdown reliever in the eighth inning last year, helped St. Louis get to the brink of the World Series, right?

Royals in Bronx

The Yankees aren't the dominant Yankees of past years, but it'll say a little more (all positive) about the Royals if they can win this week's four-game series at Yankee Stadium. They haven't won a series there since early in the 2000 season.

Tips of the cap

To the Lorenzo Williams Celebrity Weekend this Friday and Saturday, for directing all money to charities. Football star Dorial Green-Beckham is supposed to attend the youth football camp Saturday at Lake Country Soccer.